The trial of Robert William Pickton opens Monday on charges he killed several of the more than 60 women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside who have disappeared — and a retired city police officer says it could all happen again.

Pickton is accused of murdering 26 women whose remains were found on the Port Coquitlam farm he co-owns with his brother and sister, although the trial starting Monday will only deal with six of those charges.

Former Vancouver police constable Dave Dickson walked the Downtown Eastside for 25 years. In retirement, he signed on with the local Neighbourhood Safety Office. Not much has changed in the area, he said.

"I am here sometime around five o'clock in the morning. I got condoms and chocolate bars. Most of them haven't eaten for a couple of days, and they are certainly in dire need of a cigarette," he told CBC News.

Dickson is now working to improve safety for women who are desperately addicted to drugs.

He remembers putting together the first police list of missing women in 1997. He said it was hard to prove something had happened to them.

"The final straw was going to social services, if they were collecting a cheque … Everything started to indicate there was something wrong, because they weren't picking up their cheques."

Dickson said not much has changed over the years. There are no treatment facilities for addicts, no safe havens for women and children working the street. So, he thinks, it could all happen again.

"I could come down here once a week, and pick up a girl every week for the next year, and probably no one would notice. That's the bottom line. We have different things we are trying to do better.

"But the reality is — it could happen."